Sony Bravia 8 (K65XR80)

Can the Bravia 8 pick up where the awesome A80L left off?

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The Sony Bravia 8 is the follow-up to the Sony A80L, which picked up a What Hi-Fi? Product of the Year Award in 2023. That’s a lot to live up to. Out of the box, the Sony Bravia 8 looks a lot like its predecessor. At a superficial level, the rear, while still made of plastic, has a slightly different square textured pattern running along it. It’s also noticeably flatter than the A80L’s rear, which helps it sit flush on a wall when mounted.

The Bravia 8’s feet have been tweaked to have a flat top and be slightly thinner than the A80L’s, which look slightly chunky by comparison. This makes it easier to plonk a soundbar across the feet.

The headline upgrade to the Bravia 8 is that its WOLED panel is quoted as being 10 per cent brighter than its predecessor. This makes it the latest mid-range OLED TV to market higher maximum brightness as a key reason to upgrade this year.

However, while this means the Bravia 8 still won’t go as bright as its Sony A95L QD-OLED sibling or the MLA-equipped LG G4 – which can go up to 3000 nits peak brightness – this is still a bold claim. The A80L remains one of the brightest standard OLED TVs.

The Bravia XR processor, like all the new TV chips we’ve seen this year, promises to leverage AI to improve the set’s picture processing to deliver a more authentic, natural-looking home cinema experience – an achievement it largely manages.

The AI-focused chip aims to do a similar thing with audio, using its processing chops and Sony’s unique Acoustic Surface Audio+ hardware to attempt to offer radically better virtual surround sound. Acoustic Surface Audio uses under-screen actuators to produce sound, the idea being to ensure the sound comes from the same place as the image. Dolby Atmos and DTS:X support make a return, along with HDR10, Dolby Vision and HLG flavours of HDR, and there’s an IMAX Enhanced mode.